two

To calm her shaking breaths, Jennifer took to the ladies’ room after taking back the empty tray. It smelled like cigarettes, like one of the guests had snuck a smoke during dinner and now the smell, along with the adrenaline rush, made her want to smoke as well. But she hadn’t had a cigarette since her twenties.
She rinsed her face in the sink and dried it with a handful of scratchy brown paper towels. Her eyeliner had smudged, so she ran her finger along the edge to clean it up, then blew her nose for good measure with the damp paper.
If it hadn’t been for that wink, she wouldn’t give much more thought to her reflection, but because of it, she fluffed up her hair and turned to the side, smoothed her shirt and sucked in her stomach. Again, it could be worse.

She exited the bathroom and stopped at the communications table, stalling mainly, not knowing what to do once she returned to the dinner.

The doors from Fellowship Hall opened and she looked to the sound.

Homeless James Franco stood in the hallway looking at her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he answered. “I was just, uh, looking for the restroom.”

“Are you going to smoke?” she asked without thinking.

He gave her that smile again. “Maybe.”

“Well, then don’t go in there. Come on.”

The upstairs Sunday School classrooms would be locked, same with the supply room and anywhere else considered “private.” She led him down the hall toward the sanctuary. They wove around the temporary screen meant to deter guests away from the off limits hallway, and down the corridor to what she considered the fancy restrooms. The ones with the dressing areas for brides and grooms, across from the formal lounge and just shy of the chapel. She nodded to the door. “That one’s better.”

He pulled a pack of smokes from his jacket and extended it. “What one?”

She glanced back as if they had been followed. “Sure.”

Because he’d asked her and because she’d never been in the men’s room, she pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and he followed behind.

The fancy women’s room had a dressing area with papered walls of a floral scarlet with a moss green duvet and three-way mirror adjacent to the toilet stalls and sinks.

“I actually gotta,” he nodded toward the stalls.

“Oh yeah, of course,” she replied and stood awkwardly in the dressing area, trying not to listen to him pee and concentrated again on her eyeliner and what in God’s name was she doing in the women’s restroom with this man and an unlit cigarette between her fingers.

He exited the stall and she heard the water run as he washed his hands.

“You were really looking for the bathroom?” she said when he returned to the room.

He nodded.

“You weren’t looking for a place to smoke?”

“Nah, I was totally going to smoke in there, too,” he grinned with those squinty James Franco eyes. He flicked the lighter and extended the flame to her.

It had been so long since she’d had a cigarette, but as soon as the smoke filled her lungs, she was filled with nostalgia and a longing for the days hanging out at the skate ramp with her first boyfriend, the one who she learned died of an overdose in his early thirties, and the days with her second boyfriend, an entitled boy from Montgomery who went to an all-boys Catholic school but would steal cigarettes from his mom’s cartons of menthols, or they’d sneak into the hotel lobby up the street and buy them with a handful of coins from the machine.

He lit his own cigarette and they stood awkwardly in the dressing area, she by the mirror, he by the bench. She couldn’t help but glance at the door every few seconds, until Homeless James Franco brushed by her and turned the lock.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. Relief would have flooded her, but now that she was locked in with the man, what did she expect to happen? Was he going to do something illegal? Maybe shoot up something like she had first imagined.

He took a long drag and the ash fell to the carpet. “What are you expecting?” he asked her directly.

“Uh, I don’t,” she puffed on the cigarette to stall, hopefully come up with a witty response, but nothing came. “I don’t know. I just,” she cleared her throat, “I just wanted a cigarette.”

“Is that all you wanted?” he asked, taking a step toward her.

She took a step back but kept her eyes locked on his.

He took another step, closed the distance between them. Taking the burning cigarette from her fingers, he extinguished them both on the glass counter in front of the mirrors and leaned into her. “You just led me here to smoke?” he asked, his handsome face inches from her.